John Hanc penned a story for the New York Times – NYTimes.com – which included some excerpts from an interview I did relative to the concept of airport gyms and AirportGyms.com. The story was about his workout experience with GoodLife Fitness — Canada’s largest chain of health clubs — and their newer in-terminal airport gym at Toronto’s Pearson airport (YYZ). John wanted to see “if the very idea of working out at an airport gym really works.” I, for one, had believed and have always assumed that if it (the airport gym) was properly thought out and executed, given size constraints of the terminal space available and travelers time limits, it would go precisely as any other gym experience would go. Which is what one would hope so you could count on having that consistent gym or workout experience in a compressed period of time and in the space allotted.

John’s basic question was, “Can a member of the flying public get to the gym, work out, shower, go back through security (and in this case, customs), and arrive at the gate for his or her flight in 174 minutes — the average layover time for a passenger here, according to Pearson officials?” His criteria for his “workout” time needed was based on a 60 minute workout. If you read his full story, link above, you will see it was a successful test. The rarer to find IN terminal airport gym experience worked for him. No surprise here, but glad to see someone put the IN terminal airport gym experience to the test from the average business travelers perspective.

So anyway.. John and I had a pretty lengthy interview before he set out on his journy and we covered topics like; where did my idea for AirportGyms.com come from, what did I think about the GoodLife Fitness in terminal gym concept (what litle of it he could tell me about), why did I think that airport gyms IN termianls are so far and few between, how I thought the concept would expand in the coming years IF larger chain gyms and terminal authorities could start to think outside the box, and much, much more. Some of those comments can be seen in his article. So I suggest you head on over to the story to read all the details.

PS – this also means we updated the gym listing for our Canada airport gym listings for Pearson (YYZ), as we had the GoodLife Fitness location already listed.